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THE TRIPS OF THE GOOD DOCTOR DOG. - Liu E
Madrid, Publishing Chair, 2004. Translation of Gabriel García Noblejas and introduction of Juan José Ciruela and Javier Martín Ríos.
At the end of the dynasty Qing, the Chinese literature experienced a renewal process for the increasing influence of the western literature, due to the deeper and deeper contact of the western thought in the bosom of the Chinese culture. One of the literary genres that experienced with more intensity this renewal was the novel. Between last two decades of the XIXth century and the first one of the XXth century, the novel was the fashionable genre of the epoch. The heyday of the periodicals, facilitated by the expansion of the printing and the modernization of the art of printing, did that the narrative genre was within reach of more readership and was enjoying major popularity. One of the most important novels published in this period was The trips of the good doctor Can (Laocan youji), of Liu E (1857-1909)) and written between the year 1903 and 1904. This work has been catalogued inside the "novels of social denunciation" published at the end of the dynasty Qing, but, in fact, also one opens to other subject-matters.
Liu E was born in the Jiangsu province in the bosom of a family of ancient military men. From child it received a careful education and of young man it was cultivated in diverse disciplines of the knowledge. After the death of his father, he needed to make the living for himself and for consequence his intermittent and unfortunate incursion began in the world of the business. In his youth he was a follower of the sect Taigu, inspired by different extracted ideas of the confucianism, the Buddhism and the Taoism, although the confucianism was the essential source from which this sect was drinking. One of his principal personal obsessions was the control of the waters of the Yellow river, where it worked during a time like adviser, obtaining big advances in the flood control. Later it took part in some projects of construction of railroad lines, but that did not go so far as to become true for the strong opposition of the officials of the epoch. After several attempts of entering the business related to the commerce of the salt and the coal, he traveled to Japan. To his return to China he bought several areas, in the city of Pukou, and he was accused of corruption; Yuan Shikai, future president of the first Chinese republic, exiled it to the province of Xinjiang, where he died in 1909. The rough life of Liu E is a clear reflex of the uncertain and confused epoch through that he had him to live.
In The trips of the good doctor Can, Liu E tells us the adventures and experiences of the doctor Can, a straight and just man who with his knowledge and benevolence is exercising good there where the injustice has thrown roots in the society. In his constant gait, Liu E contacts a series of personages who are planning the thread of the whole story. The essential content of the novel centers on the criticism of the doctor Can of the tall officials of ends of the dynasty Qing. The writer not only denounces the corruption and the incompetence of the administration; his criticism is directed to these officials of big ambition, who prefer his personal career to the common interests of the country, like the personages Yu Xian y Gang Bi, followers of the riot of the Bóxers, which end produced disastrous consequences for China. But since it referred previously, The trips of the good doctor Can there is a novel that exceeds the thematic ambiences of social denunciation. Across the trips of the doctor Can, the reader goes submerging in diverse places of the Chinese geography, each of them with his own cultural characteristics. Also, every personage hides a history, which in his set offers the testimony of an epoch in transition, that of ends of the dynasty Qing, this is, the last dynasty of the millennial history of China.
The trips of the good doctor Can there is a reading forced for all the students and fans to the Chinese literature. In the figure of Liu E, writer of reforming spirit, we can see the illusion of this group of intelligentsia that it tried to extract to the country of the west bearing in mind the new situation through that one was living in China and in the international ambience. This translation realized by Gabriel García Noblejas, supposes a big contribution in the world of the sinology.
JAVIER MARTÍN RIVERS
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